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In 2002 the owners of R.D.’s Drive-In, a small eatery in Page, Arizona, began requiring their all-Navajo staff to speak only English when serving customers or working in the kitchen, as well as when they went on break. According to the New York Times, R.D.’s owners claimed this English-only policy was necessary because some male employees were making rude and sexually-suggestive remarks in Navajo about customers, and they insisted that the ban on Navajo actually proved that management supported its Navajo staff and patrons.

At least that’s what elementary school teachers believe. Just when we thought that our schools were finally catching up with their students by teaching keyboarding instead of old-fashioned handwriting, a Newsweek report reveals that most teachers actually think kids who can copy out their letters in a big, round hand “produced written assignments that were superior in quantity and quality and resulted in higher grades – aside from being easier to read.”

Washoe, the chimpanzee who learned American Sign Language in the 1960s, died after a short illness on Oct. 30, 2007, at the age of 42, at her home on the campus of Central Washington University. She had lived at the university’s Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute since retiring from her position as the first signing chimp at the University of Nevada in 1970.

When Goethe died, his final utterance was, “Mehr Licht,” ‘more light,’ and Hamlet went offstage with the equally enigmatic, “The rest is silence.” But there were no reports that Washoe signed any last words or even waved good-bye to the friends who attended her at the end.